WEBVTT

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(Ian Goldin) Great, thank you: it's 
wonderful to be with educators

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who care about the intersection
of learning and technology,

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because that's going to shape the future.

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Whether we're able 
to get this right or not

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will determine whether we have
a glorious 21st century

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or a period of unmitigated risks.

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The walls are coming down everywhere and
it's difficult to not think about this,

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being so close to it, here in Berlin,

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25 years ago, these walls coming down.

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But it's not just about physical walls
coming down,

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it's about mental walls,
it's about financial walls,

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it's about technological walls.

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All the walls are coming down,
and it's that

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which makes this the most exciting century 
in the history of humanity.

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It changes all of our lives
in surprising ways.

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And it's certainly changed mine.

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I was living in Paris 
when this wall came down.

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I didn't imagine that it would touch me
personally.

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I thought it was about Eastern Europe,
about the Cold War, about something else.

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But within 6 months, I would, 
much to my surprise,

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I was invited to have dinner with
President Mandela in Paris.

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He wasn't president then, 
he had just been released from prison.

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But he was released 
because the Cold War ended.

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And the defining feature of this period
we live in our lives

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is that what happens elsewhere will
dramatically affect us in new ways.

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It's this change that results 
from the walls coming down.

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And it's this change that will shape
education going forward

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and technological progress.

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And of course, the other fundamental 
period of -- in this time --

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is technology, technology, 
which got off the ground

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at the same time as the Berlin Wall
came down, over 25 years.

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This exponential growth in
virtual connectivity.

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And now we have a world of 5 billion
literate, educated people

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whereas we had a world, only 30 years ago,

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of well less than a billion 
connected people.

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Four billion more literate
connected people in the world,

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and this is the engine of change,

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where the people in the slums of Mumbai,
Soweto's Al Pano (check)

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or in apartments in Berlin,

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they will contribute to change 
in surprising new ways.

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And they're coming together.

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There is a release of individual genius.

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If you believe in the random distribution
of exceptional capabilities, which I do,

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there is just more people out there,
educated, connected, giving, learning.

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But I also believe in collective genius,

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the capabilities of people 
coming together,

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to form teams, 
to learn from each other

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through the methods that 
we learned about this morning.

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and in other ways.

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So new cures for cancer being developed
in 24-hour cycles around the world.

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My lab in Oxford doing this with people 
in Beijing and San Francisco, in Palo Alto

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and all over, in real time.

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There is no sleep on innovation any more.

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And that's the power, the engine,
which brings change.

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So if you think you've seen 
a lot of change

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be ready for much more surprises.

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This is the slowest time in history
you will know.

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It's going to get faster,
the pace of change greater,

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the surprises more intense.

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It's always going to be

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more and more difficult 
to predict what's next.

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Uncertainty will grow because
the pace of change is growing.

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Because the walls have come down,

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there are two billion more people 
in the world since 1990.

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And that's because ideas have traveled,
simple ideas,

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like washing your hands prevents
contagious diseases;

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really complicated ideas
like those embedded in vaccines

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in new cures for cancer
and many other things.

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Two billion more people coming together,
most of them now urbanized,

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and even those that aren't
physically together,

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virtually together.

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A quite extraordinary moment
in human history,

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one where we've come together
as a community,

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like we were 150'000 years ago,
when we lived in villages together,

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our ancestors in East Africa,
and the dispersed around the world

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and now, reconnected.

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And it's this reconnection which,
I believe, gives us the potential.

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But do we learn from it?

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And are we able to think of ourselves
in new ways,

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because we're connecting in new ways?

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Is this wall coming down changing the way
we are and we think?

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Or do we still think like individualists
in our nation states,

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pursuing our own self-interest
and those of our countries,

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not realizing that now,
we are in a different game?

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Now we're in a game in which
we have to cooperate,

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where we have to think about others,

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where our actions, for the first time,
spill over in dramatic new ways

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and affect people 
on the other side of the planet.

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This pace of education means that 
not only are we liberating ourselves,

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but we're liberating people from
all sorts of past habits.

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And this change is leading 
to quick changes in social norms.

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Acceptance of gay marriage 
is one of those,

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but there'll be many, many, many others.

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And so, what we think about 
as normal today

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will seem very strange 
in a few years' time:

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the space of change driven by education,

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more doctorates being created 
in China now

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than in the rest of the world 
put together every year,

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more scientists alive today

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than all the scientists 
that ever lived in history,

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more literate people alive today

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than all the literate people 
that ever lived in history.

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This is the engine of change.

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But it's not simply about 
more and more progress.

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It's not simply that we know

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that this is going to get 
better and better.

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It's about what's next.

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We don't know what the future holds.

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We live in this extraordinary moment 
of our lives

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where we've seen exponential growth
in income: that's red.

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And we seen this most rapid 
increase in population,

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and income growth, even more rapid
than population growth, which is why

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people have escaped poverty at a pace
that has never happened in history.

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Despite the world's population increasing
by two billion over the last 25 years,

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the number of desperately poor people
has gone down by about 300 million.

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This has never happened before.

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This is an incredible time, by far 
the best time to be alive.

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Just while you're here, your average 
life expectancy should increase

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by about 10 hours.

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That's the pace of progress.

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What you're learning,
and what's happening in the labs.

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And it's that which makes me 
incredibly optimistic.

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This is the age of discovery,
this is the new Renaissance.

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This is a period of creativity
and technological change

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which hasn't been seen for 500 years.

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This is from my stem cell lab
in the Oxford Martin School:

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the lab technician's skin
turned into a heart cell.

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And this is one of the 
extraordinary things that's happening

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that makes one so excited 
about the future.

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A future of rising life expectancy,
so children being born today

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in Berlin or elsewhere in Europe,
will have life expectancies well over 100,

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and not having to worry about the things
that I worry about,

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like Alzeheimer's, Parkinson's and dementia.

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But what skills are they learning today
that will help them shape this future,

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prepare for it, and will still be relevant
in a hundred years time.

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It's those skills that you have 
the responsibility to help shape.

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We can imagine this glorious future,
an extraordinary time in human history.

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But we can also realize

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that it could come very, very badly
at .... (check 7:49)

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I looked at the Renaissance 
for inspiration

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to try and understand how people
interpreted these choices.

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That was a period of 
creative exceptionalism,

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scientific exceptionalism.

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If we think today of the iconic figures,
the Michelangelos, the Da Vincis,

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the Copernicuses,

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discovering the earth went round the sun,
not the other way round;

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fundamentally changing our understanding
of ourselves in the universe

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in ways that will happen 
in our life times.

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Fundamental changes 
which lead to Humanism,

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Enlightenment and many, many other things,

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spurred by technologies.

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Then, it was the Gutenberg press.

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Simple ideas travel very rapidly.

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Until then only monks 
could read and write,

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in Latin, in their monasteries.

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Less than half of 1% of the world
was literate.

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There was nothing to read 
-- and it was in Latin.

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And then, this invention lead
to a whole new way of thinking.

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Ideas traveled, people could read
in their own languages

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and we had the Renaissance.

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We also had the development 
of nationalism

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because people could identify.

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And of course, massive 
technological push-back.

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The Bonfire of the Vanities, 
the burning of books,

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not far from here and across Europe.

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Destruction of presses,
religious fundamentalism,

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extremism,
religious wars for 150 years.

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Now if you recall those curves I put up,

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of the long trajectory of income growth
and population growth.

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But the Renaissance did not figure.

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It was a non-event, 
it lead to no improvement

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in people's welfare in Europe or beyond.

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Are we different?

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Can we embrace our technologies in ways
that lead to sustained progress?

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And there are two things I worry about
in this respect.

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First: while the walls have gone down
between societies,

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within societies, 
the walls are going up everywhere.

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All countries are experiencing 
rising inequality.

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Why is this?

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It's because the pace of progress 
is so fast at the frontier

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that this process of integration
-- some call it globalization --

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has lead to such rapid change
that if you aren't on the frontier,

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if you don't have the skills, 
the mobility, the attitude to change,

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to adapt, to grab new things,
you're left further and further behind.

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If you're in the wrong place, 
with the wrong skills at the wrong time,

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or you're too old,
you're left further and further behind.

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And so we see in all societies 
rising inequality.

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And some people have been able to capture
the goods of globalization.

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They've been able to park their money,

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whether they are a corporation 
in Bermuda or somewhere,

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when an individual in Monaco 
or Lichtenstein or Luxembourg.

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And so governments are becoming 
less and less able

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to tax their citizens 
and tax their corporates

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and less able to fund education,
health infrastructure

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and the other things we need. 11:02